Karaites

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The Karaites ( karaim. Къарайм Qarajm, Къараймлер Qarajmler ) understand themselves on the one hand as a Jewish religious community , on the other hand as a separate ethnic group within the Turkic peoples , whose language belongs to the Pontic - Arali subgroup of the Western Turkish languages among the Crimean Caraeans . Their religion and religious practices differ significantly from rabbinic Judaism or other Jewish currents. The origin in both respects has not yet been clarified with certainty, traditionally there are several founding legends .

Name variants

In their early days, the Karaites were also known as "Ananites". This referred to Anan ben David , under whom they spread from what is now Iraq and Iran to Palestine in the 8th century AD . Today they are mostly called "Karaim", "Karäim" or "Karaiten". This name comes from the ancient Hebrew name קרא kara, מקרא mikra for the Tanakh , the Hebrew Bible .

origin

The Big Kenessa (left, 14th century) and the Little Kenessa (right, 17th century) in Çufut Qale (Crimean Tatar for "Jewish Castle")

Some suspect that the ethnic origin was parts of the Israelite people who did not return to Palestine after they had been around 720 BC. Were abducted by the Assyrians from the northern kingdom of Israel , or after the Babylonian exile of the southern kingdom around 540 BC. BC ended. The ancestors of today's Karaites are mostly believed to be the Crimean Karaites, an ethnic group who settled in the Black and Mediterranean regions in the early Middle Ages (8th – 10th centuries) . It is also discussed whether they are descendants or just contemporaries of the Khazars (7th – 11th centuries), who converted to Judaism and belong to the Turkic peoples.

Yehuda ha-Levi mentions the following in his book Sefer haKuzari, among other things: The fact that the then commander-in-chief of the Khazarian army, Bulan Bek , converted to a kind of "non-normative" Judaism and that in the Khazar empire one of the oldest Karaic schools of the "Tiflissim" was active, point to the fact that the Khazar prince himself, his followers and later also the Kagan (ruler) converted to Jewish Karaiteism. In addition, the Khazar king Joseph reports in his correspondence with Chasdai ibn Schaprut that so-called “normative” Judaism was first introduced by Khan Obadiah, d. H. was introduced after a good 200 years.

The Crimean Karaites were first mentioned by Aaron ben Joseph in 1294, when the Crimea was ruled by the Golden Horde . Genetic analyzes of a small sample show a relationship between the Crimean Karaites and the Jews, and to a lesser extent with the Turkic peoples. Close genetic relationships with the peoples of the old Khazar empire could not be established. According to Kevin Brook, there is no relationship with the Khazar Empire; the Karaites in the Crimea immigrated from the Byzantine or Ottoman Empire.

The Karaites in present-day Lithuania and Poland (Karaimen) go back to families of soldiers who were recruited from the Black Sea area by Vytautas the Great , Grand Duke of Lithuania, in 1397/1398 and settled as castle guards near the old Lithuanian capital Trakai .

Ethnic group

In addition to the Crimea peninsula, Anatolia was also an important center . Today there are around 45,000 Karaites worldwide, of whom (2002) around 25,000 live in Israel , the rest mainly in Poland , Ukraine and Australia . The total number of Karaites in Ukraine and Lithuania is estimated at around 3000 to 4000 people (2002). In the 1989 census of the USSR , 2602 people stated that they belong to the Karaite ethnic group . The Karaites can be seen as an ethno-religious group .

Language group

During their expansion in the Crimea, the Karaites retained the Hebrew spelling, but adopted the Tatar language . The Karaim language is therefore one of the Turkic languages and is divided into various dialects or local languages. It is threatened with extinction or is no longer spoken. In the 1989 USSR, 503 people reported having the Karaim language as their mother tongue . In Lithuania there are approaches to preserve the language as a cultural heritage and as a sacred language (similar to the Latin of the Catholics). In the Crimea, the Karaites use their mother tongue in addition to Hebrew during worship .

Religious community

Some see the origin of the Karaites as a conflict that broke out in the Jewish priesthood in the second century BC between the majority and a minority of believers who were called "sons of Zadok" or Sadducees (Hebrew: Zaduquim , Arabic: Saduqiyah ) or of the Greeks as Essenes which the remainder of the priesthood considered unbelieving and unclean. The Karaites became a religious community clearly distinguishable from rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century AD under Anan ben David, who was probably not a Karaite himself. During this time they probably adopted some views of Islam into their philosophical and scientific worldview. Especially in the realm of the Turkic Khazars they are said to have successfully recruited followers; while others believe that the Khazars mainly rabbinic Judaism converted . Some hold only Aaron ben Moses ben Asher (אהרון בן משה בן אשר ʾAhărôn ben Mōšeh benʾĀšēr ), who died around 960 AD, for the founding father of the Karaites. The end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century AD is considered to be the golden age of the Karaites: They trained numerous scientists in Jerusalem in their own academy . The Karaites understand the Jewish faith as a strict book religion . They interpret the commandments (Hebrew Mitzvot ) exclusively from the Tanakh and not from the oral Torah of rabbinic Judaism, i.e. H. the Talmud , which they see as a deviation from the divine revelation historically seen by the Jewish people. According to their view, it is not the Karaites but the other branches of Judaism that have departed from divine revelation. They claim to be exercising the original form of Judaism, since there are no indications of an oral law in the Tanach and this idea did not arise until centuries after the revelation. On the other hand, the Karaites in Israel today are classified as non-religious Jews. Conversely, Karaites invite members of rabbinic Judaism to join their interpretation of the sources of faith, which does not mean conversion.

The Karaites do not know a binding teaching post, but emphasize that every believer must recognize what is religiously commanded by reading the Torah independently. This attitude was probably decisive for the fact that the Karaites also examined the Torah linguistically for the first time . They compared translations of the Torah into Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic and discovered the close relationship between these Semitic languages .

According to their criticism of the Talmud, the Karaites do not have a yeshivot (Talmud school) like rabbinic Jews. They call their houses of prayer kenesa instead of synagogue , but similar to the Hebrew term Beit Knesset (בית כנסת). In it they stand instead of sitting, and perform their prayers facing south instead of east and without the classic tefillin (phylacteries). A number of other rites are performed differently by the Karaites than by other Jewish communities. The Karaite calendar is more strictly based on the moon than the rabbinical one and has numerous other deviations from the traditional Jewish calendar .

History and focus

Byzantine Empire

During the First Crusade , the Karaites were persecuted like rabbinic Jews. So around 1099 they emigrated to Constantinople in large numbers . There they were considered to be "true to the Bible" because of their reference to the Torah and so did not appear to contradict the Christian religion. Therefore, unlike the Jews, they were not persecuted as heretics in the Byzantine Empire .

Ottoman Empire

In the Ottoman Empire in particular , there were numerous Karaean communities ( Karaylar in Turkish ) in addition to the Sephardic Jews who settled in Thessaloniki after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 . After conquering the city in 1453 , Sultan Mehmed II had a significant number of Turkic-speaking Karaites brought to Istanbul. However, most of the Anatolian Karaites spoke Graeco-Karaic, a Karaean ethnolect of the Greek language, from the Byzantine period, in isolated cases up to the present day .

Karean Synagogue in Hasköy / Istanbul

Many Ottoman Karaites settled in the former Genoese Galata , today this district is called Karaköy . Under the rule of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent , the community flourished in the 16th century. Most Anatolian Karaite communities then experienced, especially since the arrival of the Spanish Jews (Sephardim), a decline in their number of followers up to a "spiritual lethargy", as some researchers put it in comparison with the Byzantine Empire, because many apparently followed rabbinical Judaism or also turned to other religions. A Karean synagogue that is still active today is located in the Istanbul district of Hasköy ( Karean Synagogue (Hasköy, Istanbul) ). Its peculiarity is that those entering take off their shoes, as in the mosques. After the first waves of emigration to Israel, France or the USA, 350 Karaites were described in Istanbul in the mid-1950s and over 90 Karaites at the end of the 80s, and the synagogue ( Kenessa ) of Hasköy is the last Karaite house of prayer still in use in Turkey .

Islamic world

Page of the Aleppo Codex by Aaron ben Ascher from the 10th century, one of the oldest surviving Bible manuscripts, owned by the Egyptian Karaite community

From the Middle Ages, very numerous Karaean-Jewish opposition movements against the rabbinical interpretation of the Jewish tradition with the Talmud are known from almost all Oriental-Jewish communities. In addition to the Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, its centers were also Al-Andalus , the Maghreb , Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Their activity is also recorded among Georgian , Persian and Bucharian Jews . As in Anatolia, but in contrast to Crimea and Eastern Europe, these communities experienced a gradual decline after the Middle Ages due to conversions to rabbinic Judaism, partly also to Islam, and disappeared completely in most regions.

At the beginning of the 20th century there was still a larger Karaite community in Egypt, which forms the second largest Karaite community after the Turkic ( Karaim ) community in Crimea and in Eastern Europe. In the wake of the Middle East conflict , almost all of them emigrated from Egypt, mostly to Israel and France. At the end of the 1980s there were only 24 Karaites left in the country. Smaller communities existed after Istanbul in the Iraqi town of Hit , where the Crimean Karaite visitors Abraham Firkowitsch , and all of 1960, described in the 19th century still 67 Karaites to Beersheba emigrated, and in Jerusalem , where in the 1920s Years only ten, in 1948 only two Karaites were described. While the Turkic-speaking Karaites of Crimea and Eastern Europe have been clearly differentiating themselves from Judaism since the 19th century and identified with an origin of Turkic origin, the Arabic-speaking Karaites always viewed themselves as of Jewish origin and as a movement within Judaism.

Crimea, Central and Eastern Europe

In the 14th century, the Karaites emigrated to Galicia and Lithuania from Crimea, where they settled as part of the Turkic peoples . In 1397 the Grand Duke Vytautas brought thousands of Tatars as well as 380 Karaean families to Lithuania as bodyguards and protectors of his castle in Trakai . After the incorporation of Crimea (1783) and the partition of Poland (1772–1795), all settlement and language islands of the Central and Eastern European Karaites belonged to the Russian Empire . There the Karaites were not discriminated against as Jews because of their ethnic and religious characteristics.

Kenesa in Trakai ( Lithuania )

At the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Karaites in Central and Eastern Europe predominantly regarded themselves as belonging to a biblical religion that was separate from rabbinic Judaism . Ethnically, too, they saw themselves as an ethnic group that did not have their origins in Judaism and therefore had no Semitic-Jewish roots. During the occupation of Eastern Europe by National Socialist Germany in World War II, the Karaites were not persecuted as Jews, but instead declared a "Tatar ethnic group" in order to be able to use them against the Russian population of the USSR . On July 17, 1942 , the war diary keeper Walter Bußmann , who was appointed to the General Staff, wrote a note about the Karaimen , according to which they “had to be left in place in consideration of the Caucasus propaganda”. Karaites were also part of the Tatar Legion , which was formed in 1942 to support the SS and the Wehrmacht . In this respect, the National Socialists gladly followed the requested report from the Jewish historian Majer Balaban , who - possibly contrary to his real conviction - had declared the Karaites not to belong to the Jewish people and their religion.

Karaean cemetery near Feodosia (Crimea)

A former religious and now historical center of the Karaites of Poland and Lithuania is the city of Trakai in Lithuania. In 2007 there were around 5,000 Tatars and 257 Karaites (including 16 children) in Lithuania, the largest of which were in Trakai (65 people) and Vilnius . Many of them still speak Karaim, at least the older generation. The survival of the language is not assured, since no singer and, after the death of the famous poet Mykolas Firkovicius , no well-known writer any longer carries the culture on. There is a kenesa in each of the two aforementioned places, both of which are looked after by a single priest. The kenesa of Vilnius in the Moorish style was returned to the Karaites by the state in 1992.

The historical and religious center of the Eastern European Karaites is traditionally the Crimea, where after the collapse of the Soviet Union the ancient community in Eupatoria has risen again. With its own efforts and with the financial help of Michel Sarach , a Karaite from France, the community rebuilt the two most important kenesas in Eupatoria. The “architects” of the Karaite Renaissance movement in the Crimea are the priests David Tiriyaki, David El and the lay community Къардажлар Qardaşlar (“Brothers”) under Solomon Sinani. These activists managed to draw the Ukrainian government's attention to the problems of the Karaites and to persuade the state to finance the restoration work in Çufut Qale near Bakhchysaraj on the Crimean peninsula . Today the ancient Kenesas host weekly Saturday services under the direction of Priest David Tiriyaki.

Another kenesa is located in the Ukraine in Kiev ; this was built in the years 1898–1902 and is called Karaean Kenesa .

America

Today there are also some Karaean communities in the United States of America .

Well-known Karaites

See also

literature

  • Julius Fürst : History of the Karaemy. Three volumes. Leiner, Leipzig 1862 ( digitized volume 1 ), 1865 ( digitized volume 2 ), 1869.
  • Jakov Duwan: Karaean Catechism. St. Petersburg 1890.
  • Philip Friedman : The Karaites under Nazi Rule. In: Max Beloff (Ed.): On the Track of Tyranny. Essays presented by the Wiener Library to Leonard G. Montefiore, O. B. E. on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Wiener Library, London 1960, pp. 97–123.
  • Simon Szyszman: Le Karaisme. Ses doctrines et son histoire. Editions L'Age d'homme, Lausanne 1980.
    • German edition: Das Karäertum. Teaching and history. Translated by Peter Weiss. Age d'Homme - Karolinger, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85418-015-2 .
  • Nathan Schur: History of the Karaites (= contributions to the study of the Old Testament and ancient Judaism. Volume 29). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-631-44435-4 .
  • Karl-Markus Gauß : The happy losers from Roana. On the way to the Assyrians, Cimbri and Karaimen. Zsolnay, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05454-7 .
  • Hannelore Müller: Religious studies minority research. On the religious-historical dynamics of the Karaites in Eastern Europe. Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-447-06292-3 .

Web links

Commons : Karaites  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kevin Alan Brook: The Genetics of Crimean Caraites. In: Karadeniz Araştırmaları. Journal of Black Sea Studies. 2014, No. 42, ISSN  1304-6918 , pp. 69-84 ( PDF; 491 kB [accessed October 1, 2018]).
  2. ↑ A Tatar-Jewish minority in Europe: the Karaimen. In: gfbv.de. Society for Threatened Peoples , February 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ Mikhail Kizilov: The Karaites of Galicia. An Ethnoreligious Minority Among the Ashkenazim, the Turks, and the Slavs, 1772-1945. In: Studia Judaeoslavica. 2009, ISSN  1876-6153 , p. 340.
  4. ↑ Ronald Funck: Karaeer - Karaiten - Karai. Chronology of an Old Testament religious community. In: timediver.de, accessed on October 16, 2018 (private website).
  5. ↑ Karaite Fact Sheet: "Karaism has been around since the Torah was given on Mt Sinai. It was only in late Second Temple times that other sects appeared and challenged the authority of the Hebrew Bible. " In: karaite-korner.org, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  6. ↑ Michail Kisilow: Karaites and Karaism: Recent Developments. in: CESNUR Center for Studies of New Religions. (Conference report) Vilnius 2003, chapter 1.1.1.
  7. ↑ Michail Kisilow: Karaites and Karaism: Recent Developments. in: CESNUR Center for Studies of New Religions. (Conference report) Vilnius 2003, Chapters 1.1.2 and 1.1.4.
  8. ↑ giving Halina Kobeckaite, quoted in Neue Zurcher Zeitung . No. 79, 24./25. March 2007.
  9. ↑ Walter Bußmann: "Notes" from the War Administration Department at the Quartermaster General (1941/42). In: Klaus Hildebrand, Reiner Pommerin : German question and European balance. Festschrift for Andreas Hillgruber for his 60th birthday. Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-412-07984-7 , pp. 238-240.
  10. ↑ Claudia Becker: The Karaean miracle. In: The time . 22/1995 ( zeit.de [May 26, 1995, accessed October 16, 2018]).
  11. ↑ Halina Kobeckaite: Lietuvos Karaimai. Baltos Lankos, Vilnius 1997.
  12. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung. No. 79, 24./25. March 2007.